The previous Conservative government, and the MP for Croydon South, knew for more than five years that leaving the EU would make it more difficult to deal with asylum seekers – but that’s not what they said publicly
Chris Philp, the Croydon South MP and former Conservative government immigration minister, has known all along that Brexit has meant that Britain has lost control of its borders.
That’s according to Sky News, who last night broadcast a leaked recording of Philp, now the shadow Home Secretary, acknowledging that being outside of the European Union put Britain in a weaker position on immigration than previously.
Boris Johnson, together with Philp and the rest of the rabid right, had campaigned for Brexit claiming it would mean “taking back control”.
In fact, as Philp has admitted in a private online meeting, the opposite was always the case. Britain’s exit from the EU meant the end of UK participation in something called the Dublin agreement, or Dublin 3, which governs EU-wide asylum claims.
Being outside the EU meant that the UK “can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum”, Philp was recorded as saying to his meeting.
Under the EU’s Dublin regulation, people should be processed for asylum in the country at which they first entered the union. Britain is unable to participate in the Dublin agreement since its terms are only open to full members of the EU.
In the leaked recording from the Tory briefing meeting, Philp appeared to suggest the scale of the problem surprised those in the Johnson government.
Online troll: the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp
Perhaps under-occupied now he is out of government, Philp has taken on the role of online troll since the Conservatives were defeated at the General Election last July, posting almost daily tirades about small boats, Rwanda and paedophiles, often all in one tweet.
What he was recorded as saying at an internal Conservative Zoom meeting last month, ahead of the local elections, provides proof that he and the Tories knew that their Brexit stance would make dealing with immigration harder, rather than provide greater control.
“When we did check it out… [we] found that about half the people crossing the Channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe,” Philp said in his meeting.
It now emerges that it has been Philp’s and his Tory government’s support of Brexit that has created a situation whereby none of these arrivals can lawfully be returned to France or other EU states.
Philp has been saying one thing in public, while knowing the opposite to be true, for at least five years.
In 2020, Philp said: “The Dublin regulations do have a number of constraints in them, which makes returning people who should be returned a little bit harder than we would like. Of course, come the January 1 [2021], we’ll be outside of those Dublin regulations and the United Kingdom can take a fresh approach.”
Since Brexit and the ending of the UK’s part of the Dublin Agreement, Britain has to negotiate individual bilateral returns agreements with other nations.
Last night, Sky News reported, “In the summer of 2020, Mr Johnson’s spokesman criticised the ‘inflexible and rigid’ Dublin regulations, suggesting the exit from this agreement would be a welcome post-Brexit freedom.
“Mr Philp’s comments suggest a different view in private.”
The latest admission came in a Tory Zoom briefing at the end of April, just ahead of the local elections. Philp was asked why countries like France continued to allow migrants to come to Britain.
“The migrants should claim asylum in the first safe place and that under European Union regulations, which is called the Dublin 3 regulation, the first country where they are [seeking] asylum is the one that should process their application,” Philp said.
“Now, because we’re out of the European Union now, we are out of the Dublin 3 regulations, and so we can’t any longer rely on sending people back to the place where they first claimed asylum. When we did check it out, just before we exited the EU transitional arrangements on December 31, 2020, we did run some checks and found that about half the people crossing the channel had claimed asylum previously elsewhere in Europe.
“In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, somewhere like that, and therefore could have been returned. But now we’re out of Dublin, we can’t do that, and that’s why we need to have somewhere like Rwanda that we can send these people to as a deterrent.”
Philp’s enthusiasm for the Rwanda plan is somewhat undermined, not only because of its huge cost to the British tax-payer, but also because it has been blocked by the European Court of Human Rights. Not a single migrant, illegal or otherwise, was ever transferred to Rwanda, and the scheme was binned by Keir Starmer on entering Downing Street last year.
Sky News reports that government ministers have confirmed the Labour government is discussing a returns agreement with the French that would involve both countries exchanging people seeking asylum.
The Conservatives under new-ish leader Kemi BadEnoch, meanwhile, claim that they have plans to deal with immigration. Just like they told us they did when they were in government.
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The Peter Principle is where somebody rises up the greasy pole until, so the theory goes, they reach their level of incompetence – and stay there. With the Conservative Party, it’s quite possible that Chris Philp will reach the very top, before being toppled shortly after, like Liz Truss and so many others
Arfur, You appear to be suggesting that Philp is still one promotion away from reaching his level of incompetence.
Garbage. If we’d left the ECHR and heavied up, it would have been easy to stop illegal migration. Having said that, ‘legal’ migration is the main culprit when it comes to big numbers.
Really? David Davis, ex Brexit Secretary, on leaving the ECHR: ”It doesn’t automatically destroy Brexit, but it does pretty much automatically destroy the Good Friday Agreement. The Good Friday Agreement, if you read through it, has a whole load of clauses which are based on the European Convention on Human Rights, it’s fundamental. So, if you destroy your support for that, then you destroy that. It gives pretty much an automatic right to the European Union to pull the plug on everything else if they want to because there are enough clauses in the TCA to do that.”
So you need to think carefully before you push for leaving the ECHR, because you risk violence returning to Northern Ireland, destroying the hard won TCA agreement and invalidating a whole raft of other international agreements and treaties which all have reference to ECHR rights.
The fact remains that many young men are paying traffickers large sums to leave a safe place like France to make the dangerous Channel crossing in rubber boats.
Either this is because our benefits system pays them enough to make the risk worthwhile, or there is some externally organised invasion underway.
Either possibility is solvable outside Dublin, so the obvious conclusion is that the British Establishment and/or Home Office wants them here.
More conspiracy theory nonsense from the far right, without a shred of evidence to support any of the claims made.
It always amazes me that people invent any amount of bollocks to imagine why people want to come to the UK. The biggest pull by far is that we speak English, which just happens to be the second language in many parts of the world.
Why should it be more difficult to remove illegal immigrants now that we have left the EU? We are frequently told that we cannot do various things because of international law. Well, surely under international law the boat people who embarked in France would be classified as residents of France, however temporary that residency of France had been. Those people entered the EU and become EU residents so international law should permit us to return them to France. Of course we will not do so because this weak, Awful Labour Government does not want to upset France and indeed claims it wants to get the UK closer to the EU.
Can any “armchair lawyers” refute my analysis of this aspect of international law?
We had an agreement with the EU.
We are no longer in the EU, hence the agreement no longer applies. So we have to negotiate new agreements.
Which is something Philp and the Tories failed to do for almost five years.
It is as simple as that, although appreciate that you may struggle to grasp the principle.
You have not offered a coherent analysis of international law. You have offered layman’s nonsense.
‘Resident’ is a legal status which carries both rights, privileges and obligations. Under your interpretation if you travel abroad on holiday you would become a resident of any country you visited. That would, of course, include the UK for foreigners. So anyone travelling here from France would become a UK resident the moment they landed. It works both ways – that’s the point of international law.
Whilst sitting here comfortably in my armchair, I thought it would be helpful if I used some facts to assist this IC post.
1. Every person currently in these Isles are migrants, it is just a question of time. The earliest were hunter/gatherers and a prime example of them is Cheddar Gorge Man – whose DNA revealed he was blue-eyed, brown skinned and with black curly hair- up to the present day with the Germano-Greek dynasty in Buckingham Palace. Not forgetting, of course, German heritage Nigel Farage and USA born Boris Johnson.
2. DJM Wright contends that ‘we’ should have left the ECHR and ‘heavied’ up (what ever that means and with no explanation to help us) and join Belarus and Russia. Incidentally, Churchill was a leading voice in setting up the ECHR. ‘Having said that, ‘legal’ migration is the main culprit when it comes to big numbers.’ is so esoteric to the point of utter bemusement.
3. Ron Davies ponders about the benefit payments being claimed or some mysterious invasion that is about to take place. All migrants who are either seeking asylum or refugee status are all legal no matter how they travelled to get here and thus entitled to the meagre entitlements until their status is resolved. The dubiously titled ‘economic migrant’ does not legally exist but they could be called ‘migrant workers’ These workers could be seasonal or looking for permanent residency offering skills that are in short supply here; care workers come to mind. They can also be exploited because of our very lax employment worker rights. Pick any industry that is generally not Trade Union friendly and one can find worker migrant exploitation.
D. Nicholls’ post was excellently countered by John Davis.
Further reading and enlightenment can be found at the websites of ECHR, Amnesty International and the informative The Migrant Observatory at the Oxford University.
Hope this helps.
Always helpful, Bob. Always welcome